04.53 pm

Oo-er! I really shouldn’t-a, hadn’t-a, oughtn’t-a done that! 😳 Before I started writing this afternoon, I picked up my brand-new, just-arrived-in-the-mail-this-afternoon, “Donna Hay Birthday Issue” magazine – just to have a quick glance at, you understand, while I drank my mandatory “Necessary for Inspiration” pre-writing coffee. Well, three-quarters of an hour, and a third of a cup of almost-cold coffee, forlorn and forgotten in the bottom of my cup later, I realised my mistake! I shouldn’t-a stuck mah nose inside of them-thar covers… So, now I’m late, which means that I probably won’t finish this before dinner, and I’ll pay the price by having to finish this later tonight, after dinner and television, which I really hate doing! 😦

My very favourite eldest daughter usually comes over on Tuesdays, but she was busy today so she’s coming tomorrow instead, and I’ve had most of the early part of the day to work on yet another new Mage in WoW. Yes, another one! “But, Winter, why??!!!” I hear you all calling out, in dutiful Greek Chorus unison “Why yet another character!?” Well, because I want to try a Fire Mage this time! And after that I want to try an Arcane Mage, too! …and if Jordana, my new Fire Mage works out, as I suspect she will, I may turn one of my two Frost mages into an Arcane Mage, which I believe you can do without upsetting too many apple-carts, or having to roll another character. Jordana is only level 12 so far, and I’m extremely impressed with the calibre of the spells she’s got so far! Some of those Fire spells are really nifty! 🙂 Silverhands, who is a Frost Mage (she hurls freezing spells and kills largely by hypothermic means) is now level 55, and getting to be quite strong, but at level 12, Jordana with her Fire spells is almost as good already! I almost can’t wait to try out an Arcane Mage! 😉 “Watch this space!” Yeah, so that’s what I did with my morning! A gentleman from Shadewell Awnings and Blinds arrived fairly early this morning to talk to us about shade blinds for some of our west-facing windows, and as the price and the blind fabric were about right, we should have some semi-see-through awnings installed in about a month. The blinds, which are mainly to keep the heat out of rooms with west-facing windows (like our bedroom, the en-suite, and this room, the Den!) are 99% opaque, so you can sort-of see through them – a bit – this, of course, will please me, because honestly, I get so tired of only ever seeing drawn curtains, and/or blinds! Sometimes I even wonder why the hell we bother having windows at all!  Flipper, who adores sitting in a patch of sunlight, will be pleased too! 🙂 This morning there was a teeny bit of sunlight trying to weasel its way through our drawn (as usual!) blinds in here, and Flipper went and sat very deliberately and primly in front of where she sensed the sunlight was, and just stared at us until we finally got the message… Julian pulled the blind up just enough for her to have a small patch of sunlight in which to sit, and then he went and got her her favourite mohair rug from the couch for her to curl up on, least she bruise her fragile old bones on the harsh and unforgiving carpet! Poor old girl – she doesn’t have too many pleasures left – how can we deny her the pleasure of sitting in a patch of sunlight, or a nice, warm, comfy bed to snuggle up next to her two slaves on at night, or plenty of “Daddy Pats on demand”, whenever she feels the need! 🙂

That Donna Hay magazine wot I oughtn’t-a gone and looked through before has some really yummy-sounding recipes in it – unfortunately an awful lot of it is fish, or seafood of some sort, which of course I can’t eat because I’m allergic to all of it – but there’s enough in there that I can “recommend” trying to Julian – like the roast butterflied chicken and all its variations, which sound really “healthy”, and easy to make, especially now that the warmer weather is creeping stealthily up on us… There are also some really nice recipes for fancy-schmantzy “make-em-yerself” icy-poles, like: dark chocolate turkish delight ice-cream, dark chocolate and coconut ice-cream, candied almond ice-cream, white chocolate and raspberry ripple ice-creams, with real-live (as well as frozen!) raspberries, fairy floss marshmallow ice-creams – and the list goes on! I have no doubt that if we did make any of those delicious sounding ice-creams they’d end up looking nothing at all like the pictures in the magazine (i.e. smooth, glossy, “professional”, and straight out of a Magnum packet from the supermarket freezer!) but I bet they’d taste absolutely wonderful! especially the salted caramel one, wot I didn’t put on the list 🙂 We bought a really good ice-cream making machine several years ago, but of course we haven’t used it since I went on my diet back in August 2014 – but we could now, and although the recipes don’t say to use an ice-cream machine, it does make the mixing and churning of all the “bits” (like all the raspberries, f’rinstance) a lot easier! “Food for thought”! 😉

Anyway, that’s about all I’ve been up to today, so I guess I can go and get onto all the good bits now?

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner Julian used his new George Foreman Grill for the first time! He cooked some filet steak on it, which we had with steamed Brussels sprouts, chips, and our usual half a tomato. At this stage of course, he’s still getting used to the Grill, and although the steak was very, very nice, tasty, and reasonably well caramelized on the outside, it was maybe a bit too overcooked for our liking on the inside… Julian says that the Grill needs to be hotter, and have a shorter cooking time – which he’s going to try tonight, with some Sirloin Steak. For dessert I had an Apple Le Rice, and one of my yellow Nectarines, which was still a little “crunchy” on the inside – I might give the rest of them another couple of days to ripen up a bit more… it’s a bit strange, really, as the nectarines are reasonably “soft” to touch… Oh well, it tasted really nice though, and I don’t mind them being a bit “crunchy”… For lunch today, Julian had to go out to get some papers signed, so he stopped and picked up lunch – pretty much the same as yesterday’s actually – half a ham danish, and half of a cheese and pineapple savoury roll, with one of the scrumptious Baker’s Delight white chocolate and fruit scones afterwards. Totally delicious! 🙂 Tonight as I said earlier, we’re having steak again – a different cut of steak, but still steak. This time Julian will wait until the Grill gets quite a bit hotter than he let it get last night, and he’ll cook the meat a little longer than he didn’t last night, too – and we’ll see how that goes! With the steak I think we’ll probably be having steamed green beans, chips, and out usual half a tomato each. For dessert I’ll be having a dark chocolate Chia Pod and one of the brown “Stewing” Bosc pears…

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was relatively good, considering that I seem to be going through a fairly “heavy” patch at the moment (sort-of, anyway! And of course it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what I’ve been eating! 😉 ) Anyway, I went from 65.5 kg to 65.3 kg… As I said – not too bad at the moment…

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t so good. I’m see-sawing and yo-yo-ing up and down enough to make a seasoned sailor sea-sick! This morning I went back the other way – from 65.3 kg, back to 65.5 kg again. Ghod knows what it’ll be tomorrow – after my lunch today, it’ll probably go up to something like 65.9 and three-quarter kilograms! Erk! I don’t think I even want to think about it – if you know what I mean!

And once again that brings me around to tomorrow, when my very favourite eldest daughter will be over! 🙂 naturally we’ll sit and watch episodes of “Arrow” and “The Flash”, and of course I’ll want to talk to her about her latest uni writing project which she brought over the other day for me to read… Auric and Dapple are both well – Auric’s “floaties” definitely seems to have something to do with how much he eats – but it’s very difficult to judge how much each fish gets to eat – it largely depends on who grabs the lion’s share! Sometimes it’s Dapple, but mostly it’s Auric, cos he’s bigger, pushier, and faster than little Dapple (he’s also got a bigger mouth on him, the greedy sod!) and it’s not as though I can feed him in the kitchen, and Dapple in the laundry, like you can with cats! Oh well, and on that whimsical note, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Make sure you call in again tomorrow night, to see what my weight did this time, what my very favourite eldest daughter and I watched during the day, and how I’m going with all those Mages of mine in WoW 🙂 Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it (so why bother to try?!) look before they cross the road, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry whenever possible… but most importantly, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.07 pm

Crikey, I’m all puffed out after having raced around Dalaran before I logged out and came here! I’d been looking up a brand new cooking recipe wot I learned in the Broken Isles today, so that I could make Demelza and Wynterthyme some fitting food to sustain us in our new and somewhat confusing quest chains! Er… it was a recipe for (*shudder!*) “Dried Mackerel” (and thank all the powers that be that I don’t have to actually eat the hideous sounding stuff! *shudder!*) and required Silver Mackerel x 5 (per portion) and a Cooking Fire. The Cooking Fire I had, the Silver Mackerel I didn’t have, so I quickly switched out of Wynterthyme to become Ambermyst, our Auctionator and Banker in Stormwind, ran across from the Banking Chambers to the Auction House (without checking to see how much gold I had on me first! Typical Ambermyst…) But… were there any Silver Mackerel to be had on the Auction House!? Luckily for Demelza and Wynterthyme, there were – tons of them! Seeing that these Silver Mackerel cost between 7 and 10 gold each, and because she hadn’t checked to see how much gold she had on her, Ambermyst only bought one stack of twenty, which she then posted off to Wynterthyme in Dalaran, and logged out. Wynterthyme logged on and ran for the Hotel Kitchen to do her cooking. “Dang!” exclaimed Wynterthyme “Why can’t I make Dried Mackerel, now that I have the… oh!” Yes, that’s right Wynterthyme, the recipe works a lot better when you remember to collect the fish from the – now terribly smelly – letterbox! So she collected the fish, and without even wiping the letterbox out, raced back to the kitchen. She constructed twenty pieces of Dried Mackerel, put ten of them into the Guild Bank (which now smells suspiciously like the letterbox!) for Demelza to collect, and put the other ten into her Magickal Fridge of Holding* in her backpack, logged out, turned back into me, and started writing! So that’s why I’m just a trifle hot, sweaty, and puffed out! 😉

However, I digress! We had a very good day in the Broken Isles today – I went up two levels, to level 102, and collected lots of nice new Herbs, and Julian (Demelza) went up one level, because she already went up to level 101 yesterday – and today she went up to level 102, so we’re both about even now… Demelza died twice, I died once, our poor Pets died multiple times, and we both gave our “Feign Death” abilities a good, solid work-out! I must remember to turn up my gamma settings though – I keep forgetting to, so when it’s dark, and there’s a lot going on around me, with special effects flickering and pulsing all over the place, and lots of people running this way and that – all I can see is a dark, smudgy blur! But we had a good time and accomplished a lot today, and no doubt we’ll sneak in a few hours of playing here or there during the week, while we wait impatiently for next Sunday! 🙂 Oh, I learned today that we can’t get hold of the elusive Essence Swapping whatever-it-is, to change Hati’s (our new wolf Pet) appearance, until we reach the level “cap” at level 110! I also had a bit of a quick squiz at some of the other players who were flying breezily past – they all seemed to be level 105 or higher, so in another three levels (or hopefully sooner!) we too should be able to earn our wings and fly again! 🙂

And that’s really about all there is to tell you about our day in the Broken Isles today! We scored some fairly good quest rewards, managed to knock over a lot of the smaller quest chains, and learnt a fair bit about the Lore of the new Expansion – so now I can get onto all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner Julian made one of our favourite dishes – the Lamb and Harissa Lasagna with Feta and Oregano! As I think I mentioned last night, the new brand of Harissa that we’re using is just a touch hotter and spicier than the older brand, and it was just enough to give the lasagna a decent bit of a kick! I’m not a great fan of overly spicy food, but this was “bang-smack, spot on” – and extremely yummy and delicious! After dinner, Julian divided the leftover lasagna into individual portions, in individual containers, to cool down enough to put in the freezer – and there’s enough left over for four meals! It really is very economical, as well as being so delicious! For dessert I had one of my just-ripe-enough-to-eat yellow Nectarines, and one of my Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts. Today for lunch I had another sandwich made from the whole-meal bread with the sesame seed crust, with a different type of chicken chunks in it, chopped lettuce, and basil-pesto hummus as a butter substitute – unfortunately Julian forgot the Lemon Herb Dukkah (so I’m going to demand a double lot tomorrow! 😉 ) but even so, it was still an extremely delicious sandwich! Tonight being Sunday night, we’ll be having omelets for dinner. I’m not sure what Julian’s planning on putting in it tonight, but no doubt it will have crispy bacon, some of the cheese that he used last week that went so well in the omelet, fried onion, tomato, diced capsicum or maybe even some of the char-grilled peppers that he used in the lasagna last night – but never fear, I’ll fill you all in on what was in the omelet tomorrow night. Tonight for dessert I think I’ll have one of my Corella pears, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Was still not a very pretty sight, but at least I didn’t go up again (that’ll probably happen tomorrow! 😦 ) I went from 65.5 kg to 65.5 kg – I stayed the same, which I suppose (says she grudgingly) is better than going up another three to five points! 😦 Oh well, we’ll see what tomorrow brings, won’t we!

Which pretty much brings me up to tomorrow – as it was Father’s Day today, Julian got a card and a very nice George Foreman “The Champ All In One Grill”, which (apparently!) Sears, Bakes and Grills, and which he can hardly wait to experiment with tomorrow night! 🙂 Next Sunday, he says he wants to be lazy, so the whole family’ll be going out for lunch – all Julian has to do is make up his mind where he wants to go! Our cleaning lady won’t be here this week because she was here last week (she comes fortnightly) so I should be able to get a good run-in with either Silverhands or Zelenka – I might actually stick with Silverhands tomorrow – she’s only got a few more levels before she’ll be able to fly in Azeroth, and at the moment it’s becoming quite important that she learn to do so as soon as possible! Josh will be here in the afternoon, which will be great – but that’s about all that I’m sure of about tomorrow! Auric, Dapple and Flipper are all chugging along quite nicely, as is what I can see of the garden and the veggie beds (I really need some sort of foot covering that isn’t my shoes (because I hate them so much) that I can wear when I go outside!) and really, that’s about “it” from me for tonight! However do drop in again tomorrow night, even if only to find out if my weight did go up again, or if it’s starting to calm down a little (“down” being the operative word there!) and whether Julian and I got to play with Wynterthyme and Demelza again, or if it was a totally Silverhands and Zelenka sort-of day. But until then, please do try to bee good, don’t forget to stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry, especially when it’s cold and wet, and to look after yourselves… but above all… please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*Magickal Fridges of Holding – are very handy little devices that come, free, with every pouch, bag, or backpack in World of Warcraft (which is probably why they’re all so danged expensive!) They weigh about as much as a butterfly’s antennae, and are physically smaller than a dried pea – but they can contain anything and everything from *shudder* Dried Mackerel, to Haunch of Mammoth, or even feasts for a Raiding Party of 40 or more! …and don’t you just wish that they existed in Real Life?! 😉

04.57 pm

So I thought I’d give you all a treat, and subject you to viewing my choices of possible backgrounds for this Template, one at a time. This first one is actually the second of the two backgrounds I was telling you about, and is probably the most colourful of the two, and with luck, will remain unchanged until some time Monday, as I doubt that I’ll have time to make any more graphical changes until then…

This morning, of course, I played WoW – and actually went back to my level 50 Frost Mage, Silverhands, to try and level her up a bit more. At the moment she’s questing in a place called “Un’Goro Crater“, which looks like something out of the old “B-Grade” movie, “The Land that Time Forgot” (or whatever it was called!) full of prehistoric dinosaurs, pterodactyls, strange glowing crystals, and even a giant, really, really nasty, high-level Elite, T-Rex! I tell you, you can run… but you can’t hide! He’ll git’ya fer sure! One stomp, and you’re suddenly running back to re-claim your body! Oh, and there are also nasty big gorillas to watch out for! I didn’t play for as long as I’d planned though, because I got totally fed up with not being able to find a path up to a rim-plateau that I had to get to. I know I’m always saying that the game is far too easy – and it is! As far as killing things is concerned, but the game stops being fun for me when I find myself not leveling up, and not gaining experience points, because I’m too busy running around in fruitless little circles looking for something – like a path up a steep mountain side! So listen up, Blizzard, I don’t want easy-peasy bubsey kills, I just want a do-able, playable game! I’ll try going back there again tonight and maybe turn my gamma up a bit – I think part of my problem is that I just can’t see a lot on the screen, when everything from the lichen growing on the rocks, to the heavy shading from the surrounding trees, both blend so well into the rock face that for the life of me, I can’t find a path! I’ve run backwards and forwards, more than half a dozen times, around more than half of the ruddy crater where the path is supposed to be – I’ve even managed to get half way up the cliff – I actually got the text in the middle of the screen saying that I’d “discovered” the particular section of the mountain where I was supposed to be! Then the so-called “path” turned into a perpendicular rock-face again, and once more, jump, run, you name it, I still couldn’t get up there! As I said before… I don’t want “easy”, I just want “playable”!

Tomorrow, as I’m sure you’re all aware, is Father’s Day – so we, as the curious creatures that we are, have decided that our Father’s Day will be next Sunday, and not tomorrow! After lunch today I headed off to do my treadmilling, and then we went out again to pick up some more medicine for Flipper, and to get Julian his prezzie for tomorrow – and you’ll all find out what it was then, because if I tell you now, it’ll spoil the surprise for him tomorrow morning! 😉 Next Sunday though, I think we’ll probably go out for lunch somewhere, and Julian will get his presents from my two very favourite daughters (or his two very favourite step-daughters!) then – but tomorrow he’ll get his present and a card from me, before we start running Wynterthyme and Demelza around the Broken Isles!  And that’s really all we’ve been up to today, so now I can get on to telling you all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night, because of the somewhat large-ish lunch that we’d consumed, we had plain old pan-fried chicken on a bed of plain old steamed rice with some plain old finely chopped spring onion mixed through it, and for dessert, I had one of those brown Beurre Bosc pears (in other words, I had a raw, stewing pear!) and a Raspberry Vaalia “whipped” yoghurt – which although I quite liked it, I won’t bother getting them again!. Lunch today was another delicious sandwich – made with the same sort of whole-meal bread that has all the sesame seeds in the crust – with some sort of chicken sandwich chunks, chopped lettuce, the delicious butter substitute we nearly always use – the basil-pesto hummus – and a small sprinkling of the Lemon and herb Dukkah that we had the other day – and it was most delicious! 🙂 Tonight for dinner Julian is making the Lamb & Harissa Lasagna with Feta and Oregano that we love so much – I’ve just been out to the kitchen, following all the delicious cooking smells wafting through the house, and had a teeny little taste-test of the lamb and harissa mixture – this brand of harissa has just a wee bit more of a “bite” to it, so I think it’s going to be just about perfect! …I can’t wait for dinner… 😉 For dessert I’ll be having one of my new yellow Nectarines, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I said it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and it wasn’t. I went up from 65.0 kg to 65.5 kg, which is fair enough, after our lunch yesterday (though I really can’t see how there could have been a whole five points worth of weight in those few chips and the very thin-ish slice of Orange-Clementine!) Anyway, that’s where I’m at now, and it’s going to have to come off again. It will have to – or I’ll have to go back on the Optifast diet, which I’d really, really prefer not to have to do! I guess that – just like me – you’re all just going to have to weight and sea…

And here we are again – back full circle to tomorrow again! Flipper is still “nesting” in the doona, and leaving copious amounts of grey “fluff” all over the bed! Seems that “Sumer Is Icumen In” – or spring is, anyway – and Flipper is very happily exchanging her nice, heavy winter fur coat for her nice, light and airy summer one – and what’s more, she’s very generously letting us take care of the debris! It took absolutely ages last night to dust the doona down before we could go to bed! I’m wondering if it would be worth pinning an old flat sheet to the top of the doona – we’d have to un-pin it from the doona every night, and carefully fold it (and all the loose fur in it) up – for shaking outdoors the following morning, before re-pinning it to the doona – but at least I wouldn’t be running around the bedroom at one thirty in the morning, chasing random drifts of fluff that have fallen off the doona whilst I was brushing it down! Mmm… it does sound like a lot of extra work though, doesn’t it… I think I’ll think about it some more… Auric and Dapple are still behaving themselves – thank heavens fish don’t shed their scales all over the place at the change of the seasons… or maybe they do, and we just don’t notice it, because they fall to the gravel at the bottom of the tank and sort of – bio-degrade? Anyway, that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night, to find out if we did decide to try out the “sheet solution”, how we went in WoW, and whether we died or not, and what further punishments my body decided to inflict on me for my truly gluttonous behaviour yesterday – or in other words, how much more did I go up! Until then however, please at least try to bee good, remember to live out of your imagination, not your history, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, even when you don’t think it’s going to rain… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.16 pm

Here I am again – and depending on if and when you dropped by earlier, you might – or might not – have seen the background tile that I’d been searching so frantically for yesterday! As you can now see, however, it’s not there… Yes, I do still like it, just as much as I did yesterday, and no, I’m not using it – yet – because I’ve found another background that I like, almost as much as the first one – and once again, depending on if, and when, you dropped by before, you might – or might not – have seen that one, either instead of, or as well as, the first one… So are you all confused and muddled about that yet? Good! 🙂 That means that I have achieved my goal of confusing you all, yet again! 😉 No… I found the original pattern I wanted later last night – and this time I saved the wretched thing before I used it! I put up the new background quite late last night – either just before, or just after midnight, I think – and it was there until about forty-five minutes ago, while I was doing some “reviews” of the layout here, and I found the other background… which I not only saved, but also extracted a copy of the colours used in it. I then swapped the background tiles, saved, and published it – and as it was up (i.e. online and visible to all) for all of about twenty minutes, before I changed back to this dull, boring, plain palette of colours that you’re now seeing (as of the time stamp at the beginning of the blog!) By this time tomorrow I should have finally decided on which background to use – if not, it’ll still be looking like this! 😉 On the other hand, I could use the two backgrounds on alternate days! Wouldn’t that be fun (…and a lot more work for me! Hmm… maybe I won’t do that, after all!)

I WoW-d for most of this morning – I was going to take Wynterthyme out Herbing, to try and catch up level-wise with Demelza, but when I logged on and saw where I was – in the middle of some strange Tauren building – I chickened out… because if Demelza is notorious for falling off, and/or into dangerous places, well, I’m even worse (if that’s even possible!) when it comes to directions, reading maps, and finding my way around my own Garrison – in other words, I get lost, every time, and all the time, even if I’m in familiar surroundings! It took me nearly a week after we moved in here, to remember that when exiting from this room (the Den) I had to turn left to go to the front door, and turn right to go to the kitchen and lounge room! *sigh* So anyway, I looked at myself standing there in this great big Tauren Hall, and decided that maybe I’d go Herbing “later on“, when Julian would be around to lead me back to …wherever that place was/is… and I went back to Saurfang, to Zelenka, my extremely promising young Warlock. She was still questing around in the Southern Barrens, and really, the mobs there were really far too easy to knock over, including mobs that were at least two levels higher than I was, and as I’d said last night, I didn’t really expect to be there much longer! Sure enough, a very short time later I noticed movement at the station, for the word had passed around That the colt my Action Bar – a nice big “!” on my Heroes-Board-thingy, telling me in no uncertain terms, that King Varian Wrynn needed me urgently in Feralis, and to go there with all haste, and “toot sweet”, as the French say, where I was to report to someone-or-other, whose name escapes me at this particular point in time! So off I trundled – again! I had to fly back to Astranaar, and once more run from there – this time down through the Stonetalon Mountains, to Feralis – via Desolace! I’d pretty much just arrived in Feralis when Julian announced that he was going to do the shopping at The Glen… and as there were a couple of things I… er… wanted to pick up too, I offered to go along with him…. so we went shopping, and that was the end of my WoW-ing for the day! 😉

I picked up a couple of rather nice “rice bowl” type dishes for putting sand in… and in which we stand our incense sticks, when we light one. They work a lot better than those narrow wooden incense holders, and if you stir the incense ashes back into the sand it makes the sand smell nice and when you’re not burning the incense, the perfumed sand acts as a sort-of a “potpourri” 🙂 I also picked up some more “fluffy” soap – the sort of soap that comes out of the dispenser as a foam – hence my appellation of “fluffy”! I use it to wash my glasses as there’s nothing harsh or abrasive in the foam and it seems to work extremely well. It’s getting harder to get the non-antibacterial hand wash these days, goodness knows why – most people I’ve talked to don’t like it at all – they all say that it’s far too harsh on their hands, to the point that they get peeling skin and rashes from it! We generally get the Palmolive foaming soap – Dettol make one too, but all of theirs are the antibacterial ones – however, I did notice one other “fluffy” or foaming hand soap today – made by “Organic Care”, the makers of the shampoo that I use! (Josh actually recommended it, and it’s really good!) there were two different “flavours” on the shelf there, but there was only one that wasn’t [censored!] “antibacterial”, so I got one of those to try, too. By the time we’d had lunch and done all our shopping we arrived home fairly late – well after three thirty – and then Julian took my passport photo (please don’t ask! It’s truly terrible!! I nearly fainted when I saw it!) What gets me is that you have to have your glasses off for your passport photo – never mind that you can’t even see which direction the camera is in without them – you just have to rely on occasionally dubious voice directions! “Turn you head a little to the left… your left… no, a bit further… stop! That’s too far – turn to your right a teeny bit… No, I said right! Right! (*eye roll*) The hand you ‘write‘ with, OK?!” The passport papers say that the passport photo won’t end up looking at all like the photo, to which I can only say “Thank heavens!” But… as I said – it seems strange that you need to remove your glasses (if you wear them) for the photo – why?! People can look completely different without them, so what better way to disguise yourself than to don a fake pair of glasses (with window glass or whatever in them) and just waltz on through Immigration with a fake passport!? I dunno… Still, ’tis done now, for good or ill, and we’ll get the paperwork signed, sealed, and ready to be delivered next week – then, if we want to, we’ll be able to go overseas, at long last (but definitely not while Flipper is still with us – it would break her heart if we left her for more than an hour or two! Who’d give her her Daddy Pats?)

And that was about all that’s happened here today – so I can now move on to the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had the very last of the “One-pot Spanish Chicken and Rice” left-overs, which once again, was extremely nice (though I’ll admit that the rice was starting to get just a trifle mushy by now!) For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt. Because of my atrocious weigh-in this morning (see below!) I did what I usually do, and had an extremely defiant lunch – as a metaphorical way of “flipping the finger” at my stupid and illogical body! (yeah, I know it doesn’t work that way – in fact it probably only makes my weight go up further, but it makes me feel better, displaying defiance like that, right? I’m human, and I can be surprisingly stupid like that sometimes! 😛 ) Anyway, we didn’t go to the Shingle Inn this time – we entered The Glen up at the David Jones end and decided to have lunch at The Arena, just outside DJ’s, for a change, and just to be different, this time I had a BLT 😉 I also had a reasonably medium sized slice of “Orange Clementine”, a very dense and moist “gluten-free” (I think they really meant “flourless”!) orange cake, and my usual “long black” with the little jug of skinny milk on the side. When we go to the Shingle Inn, I always have the BLT, and one of their divinely gooey and gloriously sugary chocolate caramel slices, and although Julian was a little aghast at the Orange Clementine cake, calorie for calorie, and kilojoule for kilojoule, I’d actually say that the caramel slice and the orange cake were pretty evenly matched, “diet-wise” – in fact if I was a betting girl, which I’m not, I’d put the caramel slice ever-so slightly ahead of the cake, in terms of “raw fat-making power”. Still, it won’t do tomorrow’s weigh-in any favours! Uhhh… I forgot to mention that Julian was going to have the Calamari rings, which came with chips, and the ubiquitous limp salad that these places like to dish up because it “looks healthy”, even though it’s always smothered in dressing. Anyway, I asked him if I could have a few of his chips, and he told me that I could have two – two and a half, if they were small chips – so me being me, and sailing in my full defiant glory, counter-ordered a side serve of shoestring chips! yes I did, and what’s more, I ate nearly all of them! So yeah – weigh-in isn’t going to be pleasant for the next couple of days! (*sigh*) Why am I always so ornery and perverse?! So because of our rather large-ish luncheon today, for dinner tonight we just had plain-old pan-fried chicken on a bed of steamed rice with some finely chopped spring onions mixed through it. For dessert I’d bought some Vaalia raspberry “Whipped” yoghurt, which was even lower in kilojoules than their Lemon Creme yoghurt. I didn’t mind it, but it was quite weird – like a yoghurt pretending to me a mousse, and not quite succeeding, if you know what I mean. We only bought two tubs of it to try, and while yes, I will eat the other one (unless Julian wants to try it) I don’t think I’ll get it again – it seemed to be… too lacking in “body” somehow? I also bought some more yellow Nectarines, and some of what we used to call “Stewing pears” when I was little – they’re called “Beurre Bosc” these days 😉 and I had one of those tonight, too. It was nice enough, but I think it would probably taste nicer stewed… 😥 I want my brown-skinned Nashi pears back!

Weigh-in this morning. Was “Not Nice”! I’ve been doing everything right! I’ve been religiously doing my treadmilling, I’ve not been eating anything naughty, and this is what I get thrown in my face!? I went from 64.7 kg yesterday to bloody 65.0 kg today! How’s that for trying very hard to do everything right, and to not eat any of the wrong things! Well, stuff you, body! And that’s exactly what I did today! I stuffed it with cake and chips, and I didn’t do my treadmilling! (though I did walk the length and breadth of The Glen – twice!) It’s just not fair! 😥

Anyway, that brings me pretty much full circle back to tomorrow again! I’m not sure what’s happening – I don’t think we’ll be going out – we did all our shopping today – so I guess I’ll be doing my usual… WoW in the morning, with a little bit more WoW-ing in the afternoon, or maybe a bit of graphic-ing – whichever comes first… Auric’s been good – I haven’t actually seen him have a “fit of the mads” for a couple of days, which is good, nor have I seen any sign of “floaties”, which is even better! Dapple seems to have stopped trying to nibble the ends of Auric’s tail, and Flipper is becoming very adept at creating little “caves” for herself in the doona, for her daily sleeping exercises! You should see the one she made for herself this evening! Somehow she’s managed to flip over the bottom corner of the doona (Julian said that he didn’t flip it over, and I know that I didn’t do it!) and she’s managed to “insert” herself neatly under it, like a letter into an envelope! I tell you, she works very hard indeed at her sleeping exercises! 🙂 Anyway, that’s really about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night, to see what other changes I might have made to this poor Template, how harshly my weight had decided to punish me for my eating transgressions today, and how we managed to while away the time today at chez nous! Until then though, do try hard to bee good, remember, in all of living, have much fun and laughter – life is to be enjoyed, not just endured, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry when the weather gets cold and wet… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.25 pm

“With a pinch and a punch for the first of the month – pass it on, and no returns!”

Well, here I am again – with yet another new Template – do you all like it? While I was “testing it”, I found a very nice background – but silly me didn’t save it! So, hours and hours later (quite literally, actually!) and still unable to find the wretched thing again, I made my own. It’s not as nice as the other one, which had quite a pretty flower pattern in it, but it’ll suffice until I do find it again – maybe next century, or something! This morning, however, I played WoW – part of the time playing with Wynterthyme and Demelza, the rest of the time I concentrated on my Warlock Zelenka, who at level 36 is currently questing in the Southern Barrens, and coping very well indeed – almost too well, really, and I expect I’ll be moved along again fairly rapidly. I could have gone to the Cape of Stranglethorn instead, but I chose the Southern Barrens because I’ve Tangled with Stranglethorn lots of times recently, but it’s been many, many years since I ventured into this part of Azeroth –  pretty much not since Cataclysm broke the Barrens into two halves, way back in 2010! 😯 I could have had myself either flown or Portal’d  in by Nyabinghi (Julian’s level 100 Mage) instead I decided to do some “leveling up via exploration”, caught the Ship from Stormwind to Darnassus, flew over to the mainland, and then “ran” from there, picking up Flight Points as I went. I’d actually managed, unscathed, to get myself all the way to the border between the Northern and the Southern Barrens, and then I discovered that the “border” is actually a very deep volcanic chasm, with a “floor” of lethally hot lava – there’s also no way down, apart from falling down – and if the fall didn’t kill you, the hot lava would – and no way back up either of the sides, once you’d run back to get your body, so it then became a matter of “Oh, Jooolian! I think I might take you up on your very kind offer of a lift, please…” and so Nyabinghi came and flew me over the border to my destination, just the other side of the impassable chasm! So near, and yet so far! Wynterthyme and Demelza also did quite well for themselves – Demelza gained a level – 101 – but unfortunately Wynterthyme didn’t – I think I’d better take her out to gather a few herbs this evening, to catch her up a bit!

I’ve found out that we have to have something called an “Essence Swapper” to change the appearance of our new second Pet(s), Hati. Exactly what it is, what it looks like, and how or where you get one, I haven’t been able to find out yet – I don’t know if it’s a quest reward, a “lucky drop” from a Mob that you’ve killed, or if they’re sold by a particular Vendor that you have to locate. I think “Legion” is probably still too new for players to have had a chance to write things like this up anywhere, so I shall keep looking (I’ll also ask my very favourite eldest daughter – having been a Beta Tester, she should know, if anyone does! “Watch this space”! 😉 )

I did my treadmilling after lunch today – or perhaps I ought to say “I did my treadmilling at almost afternoon tea time today”, which would be closer to the mark – I got so caught up in looking for that dratted background! Still, I got the Template up in the end, and I can always add the background later – that is if I decide that I really do like it, after all this chasing around for it! 😡 Julian used the treadmill this afternoon, too! He usually goes for a walk every morning before breakfast, but this morning he didn’t quite trust the weather, and as I’m always saying to him “Why don’t you use the treadmill? You won’t get wet if it does rain, and if your foot gets too sore, well, you’re already home so you won’t have to limp back from wherever you got to, especially if it is raining!” So today, after nearly a year of saying he didn’t want to walk on the treadmill, he finally gave it a go! I always have the treadmill set at an angle of 10°, the highest it’ll go, and I walk at 4 kilometers per hour – Julian set it to an angle of 4°, and he walked at something like 6 kilometers an hour for a bit over four kilometers! Ye ghods and little fishes, I’d have to run flat-out to keep that speed, with my little short legs! (Just call me “Stumpy”! And to think I used to be considered “tall”, at five foot seven and three-quarters in stockinged feet! I’m now just a trifle under five feet tall – and rapidly turning into one of those “little old women” you hear so much about! 😥 ) I think I could, at a pinch, up my speed to 4.5 kilometers per hour – especially if I dropped the height angle down a couple of notches… I’m used to walking at a 10° – to me it’s no different from walking on a flat surface – but at a 4° angle, Julian found that when he got off the treadmill he felt as though he was still walking, leaning over backwards, as though he were going up a steep hill! Weird…. 😕

Auric and Dapple are both well, as is Flipper, although it took me ages to get to sleep last night because of her! She likes to nestle in between the two of us, with her back curved into my back, and her paws wrapped around one of Julian’s hands, or his arm. This is all well and good, as long as I make sure that there’s enough doona on my side, so that it’s not all rucked up under her, with not enough left over to cover me when I lie down – as was the case last night! I couldn’t even turn over properly, let alone keep warm under the measly amount of doona left on my side of the cat! Julian said “just move her!”, but I can’t… I don’t have the heart to disturb her – she’s old and arthriticky, and she was all warm and snug and comfortable… so I lay there and shivered uncomfortably until she decided to get up to go and visit the litter box, whereupon I grabbed as much doona as I could, without stealing all of Julian’s, and got myself properly comfortable (and warmly covered!) before she got back… you know? I don’t think she even noticed that I’d moved!

And that’s really about all that’s even remotely newsworthy, so I can get on with the “good” bits!

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had the pan-fried scotch fillet that I was telling you about – so what was it like?! Well, it wasn’t quite as deliciously tender as the steak we usually get, but it was very nice. There were two fairly large pieces of scotch fillet in the meat packet and Julian wasn’t sure if one would be enough for the two of us or not. I advised him to cook both of them, eat as much as we needed for dinner, and save the other one for our sandwiches today – which he did. For dessert I had an apple – actually it wasn’t an “Eve” apple, it was one of the rather large “Jazz” apples – instead of cutting it into quarters, Julian cut it into five smaller “quarters” (I’ll bet none of you knew that five small quarters equals one apple! 😉 ) I had four of them, and he had one, and I also had an Apple Le Rice. For lunch today there was enough of the left-over scotch fillet for one sandwich, which I had – Julian had smoked salmon (*shudder*) The sandwich was made with that lovely tasty whole-meal bread with all the sesame seeds in the crust, a little butter, sliced up cold scotch fillet, chopped lettuce, and a small sprinkling of “Table of Plenty” lemon and herb Dukkah, which was absolutely delicious! 🙂 So, the overall verdict on the scotch fillet: a very nice steak dinner last night, even if it wasn’t quite the same quality as our usual steak, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and fresh steamed green beans, and the cold sliced left-over steak in my sandwich today was really, really good! Julian tasted a bit as he was making my sandwich, and we’re both of the opinion that it was better cold and in a sandwich than it was hot, for dinner last night! Tonight for dinner we had the very last of our left-over “One-pot Spanish Chicken and Rice”, and I had one of my Corella pears and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt for dessert. Very, very yummy! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. See-sawing again! This morning I went from 64.4 kg yesterday to 64.7 kg – up another three points! No rhyme nor reason for it, it just is what it is! However! Maybe some good news! My stomach has been gurgling a lot today – so once again the fluid seems to be on the move! Let’s hope it’s on its way out, and not gurgling out of the way to make room for more fluid to accumulate! We shall weight and sea…

And that brings me full circle to tomorrow again! I’m not sure what’s happening – no doubt I’ll be WoW-ing again, and maybe doing a bit more with Wynterthyme and Demelza, and of course I shall continue my hunt for the elusive background to use with this Template – but apart from that? Chi sà? 🙂 So, that’s about it from me for tonight, but do call in again tomorrow night, to find out which weigh my weight went (hopefully, down!) whether or not I found my pretty background tile (and maybe it wasn’t quite as nice as it’s grown in my memory since I haven’t been able to find it!) as well as whatever else we might have been up to during the day! Until then though, please try to bee extra good, remember that the most important things in life aren’t things, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm and dry even when you think the weather’s fine, because after all, this is Melbourne, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂